


Pretty enough

by multifandomgeek



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, that's basically it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-28 18:44:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20971274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multifandomgeek/pseuds/multifandomgeek
Summary: Brooke does her makeup, for no reason other than the therapeutic process of it.





	Pretty enough

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this a while ago, I don't remember what brought it into existence or what specifically I'm talking about. But it kind of holds up to the time test, isn't that kind of sad for us? lol
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much Writ for betaing and for telling me it was worth it to post it, you're the best <3

She spends a long time dabbing the foundation all over her face. She usually does it fast and efficiently, but not today. Today, there’s nowhere to be, no schedule to meet and no reason to do it other than the therapeutic process of it.

She applies her highlight, resumes the dabbing, now in strategic places. It’s easy to forget how she loves doing this with how much she has to do it compulsorily lately. Sure, foundation might not be her favorite part, but it’s repetitive, and that’s comforting in an odd way. It lets her mind wander while she’s focusing on blending, so that she’s not able to grasp onto any thoughts for long enough to spiral down with them.

She spaces out between putting her beauty blender down and getting her contour foundation. Everything is so silent. When you share a dressing room with an assorted variety of drag queens there’s always a soundtrack, even if it’s across the hall. Today there’s nothing. If she focuses, she can hear the cars going by in the street far below the windows of her apartment, or is that just the air conditioning?

She takes a deep breath just because she can. Expands her stomach to fill her lungs to full capacity and holds the air in for a second before she lets go, slowly, feels the difference it makes in her body, notices her eyes have fluttered closed and tries to remember when the last time was that she took the time to do this, without success.

She starts doing her contour, dabs a little faster, starts to get impatient, wants it to be over already. She forces herself to remember there’s no one waiting for her, no alarm set on her phone. She stops, looks at herself in the mirror, lets her eyes unfocus from the patch of skin she was looking at and focus again on her whole face. She looks ugly, ghostly with her brows covered up, her lips pale with foundation over them, even her eyelashes look a little white. There’s a long way to beautiful yet.

She looks into her own eyes. It’s weird how every time she does this she can’t keep it up for long. Well, couldn’t, it’s not like she has done it in a long time. She tries to convince herself they look the same, she’s still the same, but somehow she doesn’t think they do. After not long at all, she already feels like her mirror self is judging her, but she keeps doing it, gets closer, turns off the bright light so it doesn't hurt her eyes, looks deep into the dark pit right in the middle of them, surrounded by the light color that she’s heard described in so many different ways but right now looks like an angry ocean frozen around the dark black hole that is her soul.

A tear escapes, and she remembers why she’s doing this. She dabs the moisture away - it didn’t do much damage - and finishes dabbing and blending, turning the light back on. The setting powder couldn’t be therapeutic even if she tried, it’s too violent for that, but maybe the pat pat pat of it can be a ritual of sorts. It forces concentration, overwhelms the senses, someone can turn that into a metaphor, surely.

She brushes it off and tries to think about colors while she glues her lace eyebrows down. All she can think about is black, black, black, maybe a red lip to match her gloomy mood with some bitchy undertone. That’s too easy, though. She opens up her palette and decides to go with the less-used colors. A challenge feels more appropriate. Still, she doesn’t have really colorful palettes, just a very predictable routine, and blending the different tones is not that difficult, nor something she has never done before, just something she hasn’t done in a while.

The brush going over her eye is different from the dabs around her face. It drives her mind not to think. It’s so incredibly familiar, almost like brushing your teeth in the morning, she blinks and it’s done, her brain doesn’t even make an effort to record the process anymore. She does both eyes then decides to add another color to it, just for the hell of it. It doesn’t turn out so good, she regrets it, scrunches up her face even knowing nobody will see it.

She puts on a bit of blush and contour powder before choosing a new lip color, one she hasn’t tried yet. Opening up the sealing plastic without any rush is such a small pleasure that she smiles. She also smells it, thinks there’s probably some kind of oil in the mix, almond maybe, it’s nice. Applying liquid lipstick is something that hasn’t changed much; she still does it slowly and with way too much product, even when she’s being Professional and Efficient. She supposes it has something to do with it being the last thing she does, but there’s no reason to analyze it, honestly. It’s lipstick.

She hasn't done her eyeliner yet. That was on purpose. It looks kind of weird without the liner and the eyelashes but the lips on, as if it’s out of order. It is out of order, now that she thinks about it. She still looks beautiful, though. She applies the eyeliner loosely, putting on the black line over her lids just to take the weirdness out of it, but not with as much care as she would do normally. Still, something else is missing.

“Oh, the mascara,” she says, and it’s the first sound in the house in hours, the words hanging in the air as if they don’t know what to do with that much silence to hang out with.

She locates the mascara and puts it on. There, it doesn’t look as weird now, just the big fake lashes that she’s not wearing anyway. She leans forward, inspects her face close to the mirror. Despite the eyeshadow color mishap and the sloppy eyeliner job (that’s not really that sloppy if she’s honest about it, not with how much practice she has on her hands), she likes it. The extra time shows, as much as she’s reluctant to admit. Not enough for anyone that’s not three inches away with some sort of beauty-related job to notice, but still.

She looks into her eyes again. She’s gorgeous now. She notices she’s looking down at herself in the mirror, as if daring her reflection to say something now. She corrects her posture, but the challenge doesn’t go away. _I’m pretty, would you fuck me?_ She would. Brooke Lynn Hytes would fuck herself, in and out of drag.

She leans back, grabs her liquid eyeliner, swirls the wand around the liquid inside, wonders how much is left. _Not enough_, she thinks, pulling out the wand with the tiny brush at the tip, the black liquid shining. She leans closer to the mirror and draws a line over her eye, makes it thick, ruins her make-up slightly, just this side of asymmetric.

She dabs the wand in eyeliner again, goes to the other eye, starts at the very tip of the outer line and drags it down, over her cheekbone, crooks it to the side just so it doesn’t stay as a straight line. She smiles and it’s even worse, in a spur of the moment thinking, she drags the pad of her finger over it, smudging black over her carefully applied blush and contour.

She wets it again, carefully draws a heart under her other eye just to smudge it right after too. She runs the back of her hand over her mouth but the end result of her lipstick ends up looking too sexy still, so she also runs some black over it, the sticky lip gloss blending on the eyeliner wand. Brooke can smell the chemicals that were not supposed to be that close to her nose and decides to lick them. It’s gross, sticks to her tongue. She likes that it’s not enjoyable.

She looks at herself again and it’s a mess. She didn’t know she had been crying. The worst part is that even with black smudges all over, lips ruined, tears running down, she still looks pretty. She runs a hand through her face but it doesn’t do much, her products are too expensive to be ruined just like that. She gives up, screws the eyeliner shut, turns the mirror light off, cries while looking at herself.

“I’m still pretty,” she says. “Why don’t you love me anymore?”

She thought this wouldn’t work, this make-up therapy she pulled out of her ass to get over what? Pictures she saw online? Or were they just triggering her loneliness and things she already knew but was choosing to ignore? But apparently it worked, at least she was admitting it to herself now, admitting she felt insecure, admitting she was lonely, admitting she missed him.

She still wouldn’t say she was unhappy, because that was just not true. She still was so grateful for the life she was leading, so amazed by everything that was happening, so glad she was able to do it all. Maybe she was still unwilling to accommodate another person into it all, maybe she was still riding the high of living it, and that was her choice. Contrary to what a lot of people thought, it had a lot less to do with her dick and much more to do with her heart. She knew the answer to her own question, she knew why his love moved on and even why hers did not.

But that was all very down to earth. Very useless.

Right now she just misses him, knowing he doesn't miss her.

Even if she’s pretty. Even if she’s ugly. No matter what she puts on her face.

Even if it’s a smile.

Even if it’s a tear.


End file.
